THE U.S. SHIFT TO NATURAL GAS

A THREAT TO LIFE ON THE PLANET?

(METHANE WAS A TRIGGER IN THE PERMIAN EXTINCTION.)

During the former Obama Administration, there was a
tremendous push to replace coal with natural gas. And now natural gas
has become the number one source of electricity generation in the United
States. (EIA)
The problem with natural gas is that it is composed primarily of
methane. While methane, as a greenhouse gas, may not stay in the
atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide, it can trap much more heat
than carbon dioxide and its near-term effect is much more damaging. The consensus is that methane can trap 20-30 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
In other words it's far more destructive in the short term.

What is also terrifying to consider, is that it
was ultimately the emissions of methane that helped kick-start the
Permian Extinction, an event that killed 90% of the life on the planet (The Independent).

So this is a threat that is very real, and
should be taken very seriously. There needs to be more regulation of the
fracking process and monitoring of emissions. We should even be
considering a methane tax.

Yet there have been few more enthusiastic
cheerleaders for the shift away from "dirty" coal to "natural" gas than
the former president, Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton. Up until recently, this shift appeased the
environmentalists in their desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Natural gas has even been treated as a "renewable energy" source along
with solar and wind power. Natural gas also seemed like a political
winner because it is a cheap source of local, American based energy.
Many agreed that natural gas would reduce the need for dependence on
foreign oil and create jobs here at home. And it has frequently been
quoted that America supposedly has enough natural gas reserves to last
"100 year". So it seemed there were many politically sound reasons to
begin the shift away from coal to fracking. And while people focused on
reducing carbon dioxide emissions, they ignored the potentially larger
threat of methane emissions from natural gas.

In addition to the Obama presidency, the current
Trump presidency is also looking to promote fracking, and even lower
already low regulations. On his twitter,
Trump stated, "Fracking will lead to American energy independence. With
price of natural gas continuing to drop, we can be at a tremendous
advantage." Trump has also proposed to completely repeal Obama-era
standards governing hydraulic fracturing on federal land (The Hill, 7-24-17).

Yet is fracking and natural gas truly a better alternative to coal when it comes to the problem of global warming?
Fracking is often considered cleaner than coal because it is believed
to release half as much carbon dioxide when it is burned in power
plants. Thus the logic was that natural gas would be "half" as harmful
as coal. However, natural gas is primarily composed of methane, which
may leak into the atmosphere during and after production. Various
studies by academics, the government, and industry believe that methane
leakage can range from 1 percent to almost 12 percent of the natural gas
produced each year [1]. Although there is still much that is unknown about this subject and demands a deeper level of research and scrutiny.

Many studies have come out calling the shift to fracking in question, including this Harvard study.

When former president Obama started to encourage the use
of fracking and natural gas, the EPA supported this decision, and even
published a fact sheet showing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in
decline from 2005 and onward. (EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report: 1990-2014).
The logic behind this was that methane had a shorter duration in the
atmosphere than carbon dioxide. While methane stays in the atmosphere
for decades, carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries. So
when the data was plotted on a 100 year time line, methane looked like
the more viable option in the long-term. Thus, natural gas was hailed as
the "bridge to the future." Yet the fact that was not taken
into account is that methane has a much higher potential for trapping
heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, as we mentioned above, about
20-30 times higher according to most sources. However, Cornell climate
scientist ﻿ Robert Howarth says a more accurate figure is 86 to 105
higher. (The Nation).
So with this fact taken into account, it is possible that the Obama
driven economic shift away from "dirty" coal to "clean" natural gas may
not have been such a clean solution after all. It is possible that
America's contribution to global warming gas emissions may have
increased, not decreased, under the Obama presidency. And according to the Harvard study, US methane emissions increased by 30-60 percent during the Obama presidency.

The EPA previously estimated that carbon dioxide and
methane gas emissions were on the decline. But if the information
released by the Harvard study is true, then it is possible that green
house gas emissions could have increased from 2005.

THE TREMENDOUS SUPPORT FOR FRACKING DURING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

A key example of Obama's support for natural gas can be seen in his 2014, State of the Union Address.

"One of the reasons why is natural gas – if extracted
safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less
of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.
Businesses plan to invest almost $100 billion in new factories
that use natural gas. I’ll cut red tape to help states get
those factories built, and this Congress can help by putting
people to work building fueling stations that shift more cars and
trucks from foreign oil to American natural gas. My
administration will keep working with the industry to sustain
production and job growth while strengthening protection of our
air, our water, and our communities. And while we’re at
it, I’ll use my authority to protect more of our pristine federal
lands for future generations (White
House)."

More is outlined in the former president's Climate Action Plan (White house PDF).

Obama's Climate Action Plan received vocal support from
the EPA as well as key environmentalist groups such as The Sierra Club.
The Sierra Club executive Carl Pope took $25 million from one of the
nation's biggest frackers, Chesapeake Energy, and even made appearances
with the company's CEO to tout the advantages of gas as “an excellent
example of a fuel that can be produced in quite a clean way, and
shouldn’t be wasted.”

Robert Kennedy Jr., who had enormous credibility as the
founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance and a staff attorney at the Natural
Resources Defense Council, wrote a paean in 2009 to the “revolution…over
the past two years [that] has left America awash in natural gas and has
made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly,
destructive coal practically overnight.”

Fracking was also hailed as a solution by former
secretary of state Hillary Clinton. And much political work was done to
not only expand the fracking industry here at home, but to promote the
process abroad as well. When Hillary Clinton took over the State
Department, she set up a special arm, the Bureau of Energy Resources,
after close consultation with oil and gas executives. This bureau, with
its 63 employees, was soon helping sponsor conferences around the world.
Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks even showed that former
secretary of state Hillary Clinton played an active role as a broker for
the shale-gas industry, twisting the arms of world leaders - such as in
Bulgaria to make sure that US firms got to frack at will.

So now because of all of this, the US is leading the
world in the natural-gas age, and is the number one country contributing
to methane emissions around the globe.

HARVARD STUDY CALLS NATURAL GAS INTO QUESTION

As we mentioned above, a study from Harvard has called the success of Obama's "natural gas" economy into question.
The study has found that the global emissions of methane have been
increasing, not decreasing, from 2005 and onward. The data showed that
between 2002-2014, US methane emissions increased by 30-60 percent. So
what this potentially means is that the information published by the EPA
and the Obama Administration may have been completely inaccurate. As The Nation
stated, an error such as this could be the equivalent of ﻿"the New York
Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at
17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index
fund actually stands at 11,000." This could completely undercut the US
promises made at Climate Talks in Paris.

Now, we will point out that the Harvard study is not the
only one to document this fact. The Harvard study is also not an
"official study". It is just the latest in a series of studies that has
been calling the whole practice of fracking into question. However,
around March 2016, the EPA did revise its methane calculations and admit
that it was wrong about its previous estimates, now saying that the US
needs to do more to curb its methane emissions (EPA).

THE DANGERS OF FRACKING

Last year it was confirmed by the U.S. government
that fracking causes earth quakes. Yet if that's not bad enough, the
list of fracking's deadly by-products is growing longer and more
alarming.

As we mentioned above in this report, one of the chief
problems of fracking is that it releases methane. Yet this methane
doesn't just go into the atmosphere. During the fracking process,
methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the well and contaminate
nearby groundwater. The contaminated water is often used for drinking
water by the local community. There have been over 1,000
documented cases of water contamination near fracking areas, as well as
cases of sensory, respiratory and neurological damage caused by the
contaminated water. Some of this water has even become flammable. In
2011, the New York Times reported that it obtained thousands of internal
documents from the EPA, state regulators and fracking companies, which
revealed that the "the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage
plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that
supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than
previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators
say is safe for these treatment plants to handle." (New York Times).
“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley,
former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas,
we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of
toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive
materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this
waste."

This process is also a tremendous waste of water. More than 90 percent of the water used in a fracking well never returns to the surface.
Since this water is permanently removed from the water cycle, this is
bad news for drought-afflicted areas such as Arkansas, California,
Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and Wyoming. "We don't want to
look up 20 years from now and say 'Oops we used all our water,' says Jason Banes
of the Boulder, Colorado-based Western Resource Advocates." The
redirection of water supplies to fracking not only causes water prices
to spike, but also reduces the amount of water available for crops.

If this isn't bad enough, the waste fluid left over from
the fracking process is left in open-air pits to evaporate, which
releases dangerous, volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere,
creating contaminated air, acid rain and ground-level ozone. Exposure to
diesel particulate matter, hydrogen sulfide and volatile hydrocarbons
can lead to a host of health problems,
such as asthma, headaches, high blood pressure, anemia, heart attacks
and cancer. It can also have a damaging effect on immune and
reproductive systems, as well as fetal and child development. A 2014
study conducted by the Colorado Department of Environmental and
Occupational Health found that mothers who live near fracking sites are
30 percent more likely to have babies with congenital heart disease.

At minimum there needs to be a massive increase in monitoring
all aspects of fracking and the natural gas industry. Leaks must be
detected and stopped. But this is a much more arduous task than people may
think. Fracking involves exploding the sub-surface geology of the Earth
so that gas can leak out through newly opened pores. Cornell Scientists ﻿
Howarth and Ingraffea have even produced a series of papers claiming
that even if a small percentage of the methane leaked - maybe as little
as 3 percent - then fracked gas would still do more climate damage than
coal. And their preliminary data showed that current leaks of methane
gas from shale drilling could currently be 3.6-7.9 percent. Given that
this gas is odorless and colorless, this leakage is very difficult to
monitor, detect and fix (The Nation).

Methane is worse than Carbon Dioxide. Methane production
has increased due to the use of Natural Gas, the increased use of
fracking, closing Coal plants. Methane has increased under Obama. EPA
information has been dead wrong.